Another day in the garden, I would have gone out into the Forest, but it was obviously packed, so contented myself with insect hunting on my own small patch. As ever I started with the moths in the garden trap, which included a new species for me, although it was not the most spectacular moth you will ever see. It was a brown scallop and if the name sounds underwhelming it at least is not overselling.
brown scallop
It is not an abundant species anywhere but it does occur regularly in Hampshire, although almost entirely on the chalk and seemingly not in the New Forest area. The food plant is buckthorn, but even then it is not found everywhere this plant grows. A little more impressive was a shark, the moth not an actual shark (which would have been well beyond impressive!). This is a moth I see in most years and has caterpillars that eat sow-thistle and hawkweed species.
shark
Back in April I caught a female emperor moth, which laid some eggs. The eggs hatched and are now almost fully grown caterpillars, having fed on willow, they will actually eat all kinds of things. but I had willow easily to hand. The emperor moth is one of the species in which the female produces an especially far carrying pheromone. When she is newly emerged she just sits near the cocoon and waits for the males, which fly by day, to find her. After mating the female will then fly of at dusk before laying her eggs, so moth traps tend to catch females, as a general rule for most species many more males are caught than females as they fly around far more at night in search of a mate. The caterpillars are very smart and quite variable.
emperor moth caterpillars
The emperor is our only representative of the family Saturniidae, the family that includes the silk moths and the largest moths in the world, such as the atlas moth and lunar moths.
Although the day was mostly sunny and warm there were rather few butterflies in the garden, but these few did include another silver-studded blue, this time a male and a very fresh one too.
silver-studded blue (male)
The blue was very bright and colourful, but was outdone by a wasp I found on the wild carrot, it was a cuckoo wasp, that is to say a nest parasite of another species of wasp. they are generally difficult to identify, but I am informed this one is likely to be Chrysis viridula.
Chrysis viridula
Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve 